


En Attendant

by laundromatters (Laundromatters)



Category: Gravity Falls, Rick and Morty
Genre: Depictions of marijuana use, Drug trafficking, Fluff and Angst, Gunshot Wounds, High concept sci-fi rigamarole, M/M, Mild Sexuality, Prostitution mention, Stanchez Micro-Bang 2016, Whole lotta dusty deserts and waiting around, gross old men, mild body horror, mild violence, stanchez
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-29
Updated: 2016-10-29
Packaged: 2018-08-27 14:54:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8406004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laundromatters/pseuds/laundromatters
Summary: Two old men and a broken down chevy wait in the red dust of a nameless playa for the sun to set. It never does. Written for the Stanchez Micro-Bang, it's been a labour of love. Enjoy!





	

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to my beta readers, lieutenantruby, amiekae, and Thomas Pecoraino, to my darling clouded-escapism, and to all of the wonderful people at the Stanchez Micro Bang for making this thing happen! 
> 
> Infinite gratitude to my fantastic artist Orcaputt, who kept me sane, and whose stunning illustrations can be found [here](http://orcaputt.tumblr.com/private/151950355856/tumblr_of7q3lCAFK1uzyn2g).
> 
> Of course, thank you to you, my brave readers, for your attention.

_En Attendant_

Whether it was the disk itself, or the decrepit tape deck, it soon became clear that the no-name pop-rock band of thrifted album obscurity was, literally, going nowhere. It was on its fifth play of track six, but it kept skipping, in an infinite fifth play of track six, but it kept skipping, in an infinite fifth play of track six, but it kept skipping, in an infinite fifth play of track six, but it kept skipping, in an infinite -

“Rick,” he said, “the music’s busted. Just turn it off.”

Rick acknowledged via a swat at the dashboard, like an attack on an invisible fly. The first few smacks missed. The fifth one sent the car suddenly into soundlessness. Pink noise of rushing wind as the car careened down a long and empty road, bleached by the cloudless sky. Dusty and red. Sun overhead.

If he were asked, Stanley would tell you that he is 59 years, twelve months, and one day old. He’s actually even older. When he says it, he chuckles, and rubs the back of his neck. It’s funny, after all. It’s the joke that never gets -

Rick would say, he is sixty-fucking-something, _who gives a crap_ , and that he doesn’t fuck around with age-related cliches. _They’re imprecise_ . Sixty years young is statistically on the other side of the centre line of average life expectancy for the American male! We’re all ultimately circling the drain of _m_ \- _mortality_!

“Say, Rick…” Stan whinged, gruffly, “we’ve been driving for a long time.”  

Rick deadpanned: “No shit, Sherlock."

“S _heesh_ ,” said Stan, “Just tryna’ pass the time. Quit being such a _goat_.”

 Rick snorted, rolled his eyes, and said, “W-who’re you calling a g-goat? You’re a, you’re a deadbeat _thOUGH-sand_ year-old Sasquatch, _Stan_.”

 It was an accurate (if poetic) description of Stanley.

 “ _So what_ , I haven’t had time to shave.”

 “Y _uh-_ you’re suffocating me with your, with your gross-ass b-UH-ody odour!”

 “Hey, I’m a _manly man_ , sometimes I _sweat_.”

 “Y-Yeah well, you’re giving off a very Mussolini kind of vibe right now!”

 “ _Mussolini_?”

 “… You know, the, the, the oppressive dictator of-”

 “Are you saying I _oppress you_ with my _body odor_?”

 Rick back-pedalled, sputtering, “Look, you - you said _man_ , and I said, the VERY first shitty guy I thought of, and that w-was…”

 “ _Mussolini_?”

 “Fine, j-jUHst don’t lift up your arms for the rest of the drive, _alright_?”

 He didn’t. 

_______________

 

Miami, late 90s. The wet pavement in the neon makes the world look like a silicone microchip.

Nothing about a waterlogged Miami at night seems earthly - reflections of reflections, and the smell of kicked up moisture and street grease makes for an unfriendly station between reality and the other. The occasional car lights are blinding, the sloshing of their passage deafening; they crawl past with a hum of deep bass, radiating and rattling the palm trees, which are stained with auto soot at their trunks.

The living trees are indistinguishable from the plastic ones. The people are no different; the people on the street are like moving, talking mannequins. In the alleyways, the people are matte-coloured shadows, shrouded in their oily hoodies. In the crevices between buildings, only the inch-long line of surgical steel on their needles catches glints of light from the street from the dark - inches of reflected neon light lasting only an instant, before disappearing into a forearm - into a tiny plume of crimson.

These are the outskirts. Far from the tourist traps, far from the crowds. The flotsam washing up around the edges of downtown.

There used to be this one club, in this one neighbourhood - a kind of mod-reverent punk bar that opened up during the height of the American scene. By the late 70s, it was lined up around the door and down the block for the dollar bill shows (one buck for admission, and they still broke even).

_What was its name again?_

Rick finds it by muscle memory. His nose hounds out the scent of warm beer and druggie sweat and cocktail puke, and he wanders towards it. Homing instinct.

Ultimately, it doesn’t matter what the place was called. _There it was_. Still kicking.

When Rick shoulders himself through the door, hands in his pockets, beelining to piss, he doesn’t think to check the last stall on the end of the bathroom for a scab of graffiti that says, _FLESH CURTAINS WER HERE 1977._

It had been tattooed over in sharpie tags. Nonetheless, those deep, exacto knife groves were still there. A scar in the drywall.  

Rick forgot about putting it there. Alternatively, the two percocet tablets in his stomach had started to interact with the four and a half ounces of tequila dregs he shot before wandering out of the motel.

Rick leaves the bathroom. A hum of crunchy old punk rattles the near-empty bar.

 _Wonder if my old guy still sells,_ he thought. He noticed that he couldn’t actually feel his fingertips.

He finds his old seat at the bar.

This was his last stop in Miami before a long, long trip.

 The corner seat, naturally; accessible to people from all angles, easy room for being chatted up. A bar stool for a popular man. Rick remembers when the cushion was shaped like his ass. _That’s my spot._

 There’s no one else in the bar except a surly punk bartender, texting angrily into his flip phone. _Young people_ , Rick thinks.

 That’s when the other guy walks in.

 _______________

 

_360 degrees of orange horizon._

 

Stan took up nestling into the shoulder of the seat, with his forehead pressed flat against window glass. The scenery was a treadmill of dusty orange nothingness. The pavement ahead, at the horizon line, had the distinctive haze of water, which the vehicle never seemed to reach. _Mirage._ He sulked. He nestled further into the window. Facing pointedly away from Rick.

Rick flexed his fingers rhythmically around the steering wheel. His gaze wandered, glancing over at Stan. Still snubbing him.

“We’re a…  bit of an odd couple, S-Stan,” he tried.

Stanley scoffed, “Don’t get all homo on me.”

“ _So,_ where was it you and I met again?” veered Rick. His tone was a tint... cheerier.

Stan smirked. “We met…”

 _Hang on a minute_.

“I… I don’t remember.”

Rick blinked. “Me neither,” he admitted.

“ _That’s_ … kinda strange, right?” said Stan.

Rick thought. “Stan, how long have we been driving?”

Stan blinked. “I dunno, all day?”

“Don’t you think it’s _weird_ we haven’t hit a town? Or run out of _gas_?”

Realization dawned.

“Cripes, it hasn’t been _that_ long!” and Stan flipped his wrist dismissively.

“What time is it _right_ now, Stan?”

 “It’s five. Five o’clock.” He _sounded_ pretty confident.

 “How do you _know_?”

 “Says on the dash!”

 “Well, it was five uhHH- _clock_ , when I turned off the r- _UH_ adio!”

 “ _I’ve been watching the clock,_ and it’s been moving, asshole! So you must be turning the radio off _right now_ , because the clock’s been working fine, unlike your -”

 “ _Shut up_!” and Rick swerved.  

 Dust and gravel rattled and engulfed the car as they lurched off the road to a skidding stop on the shoulder.

 A brief stillness followed. The two men heaved heavy breaths. Obscured by ruddy haze, the honey rays of the sun were stretching over the dashboard, radiating warmth - like sitting in a warm cup of tea. The dust settled. Their hearts, finally, slowed.

 Rick heaved a sigh in defeat.

 “Look,” he said, training his eyes on the horizon, “The sun has been setting -”

 “For hours now,” and Stan offered a sigh in solidarity.

 “So… you _have_ noticed.”

 “Yeah, I noticed.”

 “Time’s n-not lining up like it usually d-does.”

 “I believed you the first time you said it, Hawkings.”

 Rick snorted in derision, “Then _why w-_ would you antag- _antagonize_ me, when you _clearly_ know I’m right?”

Stan snorted a giggle.

 “Because you were bein’ a _goat_ ,” he replied, smiling.

 

_______________

 

_The fuck?_

 That man did not belong in this bar. The one who walked in, that is. Looks like Jersey trash right off the bat.

 The man was on the other side of middle-aged, but not the same _kind of_ other-side-of-middle-aged as Rick. He was beefy, but not in a sprightly way, and had the constant expression of being ready to fight and cry at the same time. Pugilistic sad-sack. This man was a teddy bear posing as a pitbull. Big hands… probably scary in brass knuckles.

 The old Hanes tank top made his chub apparent. Square shoulders. Big nose. Cracked lips - and under a heavy and disheveled brow -

 Chocolate eyes. Big sad deep dreamy melted-chocolate and honey eyes. Like a puppy.

 Rick noticed these when he made eye contact with the man.

  _Wow._

 The man approached him, apprehensively. Playing cool, big guy, kind of rough and tumble.

 "Excuse me, sir,” he said, gravel-voiced and surprizingly tender, “Are you Rico’s guy? I’m ah… I’m lookin’ for a job.”

  _The puppy-dog speaks._

 The man gave his collar a quick tug. _Bit nervous? Why?_

 “He… he said I might be able to talk to somebody at this bar,” the man fidgeted, “but he didn’t gimme a description or anythin… are you the ah, guy?”

  _Wubalubadubdub._

 Uh…yeah, yeah! I have a, uh... job…” - _it’s a routine smuggling trip, the more the merrier I guess -_ “What did uh…” _shit what was that name?_ “R-Rico, tell you?” _I can’t lie for shit on percs, yikes._

 The man, a little less nervous, a little more loose, takes a seat at the bar and asks the bartender for a shot of whiskey. He stutters as he waits for it.

 "Well… Rico didn’t tell me nuthin much, he just said…” the bartender slams the shot glass down in front of the man, and without missing a beat, the man slams the whiskey down his throat, and then slams the glass right back onto the bar top.

 “Look,” says the man, gesturing for another shot, “I’m in between investments and I could use some cash. I’ll do anything. I mean, I’ve got standards, I don’t know what you’re looking for but…”

 “Ever smuggled?”

 The bartender filled the shot glass again, and then slipped away to run the bar glass washer. It billowed steam and loud noise.

 The man startled a bit, surprised, and abruptly blushed, “Well, uh, that’s not what I thought you…”

  _He’s my age, at least fifty, is he selling what I think he’s selling?_

 “Yeah,” the man finally taught his train of thought, “Yeah, I’ve… delivered some items before. Across state lines, border of Mexico...” the man took the second shot of whiskey, “You could even call me experienced. Name’s, ah… Steve. Steve Pinington”

 Rick failed to suppress a grin.

 “I think I’m your guy. The name’s _Rick_.”

 

_______________

  _Ah, the side of the road - a good place to be for getting nowhere._

 “I gotta’ tell ya, this isn’t how I imagined an alien abduction,” Stan intoned as he stepped out of the car and slammed the door. The damn thing just about fell off - this was, Stan noticed as he took a step back, _a total junker._

 “Well, it isn’t necessarily what you would call an _a-uh-bduction_ , per se,” Rick wandered a circle around the vehicle, kicking various spots in lieu of a proper inspection, “If I had to guess - and I have to guess -  it looks like we’re in some kinda’ t- _ugh-_ time loop.”

 Having completed his loop in around to the trunk, avoiding its cliff-hanging metal bumper, Rick fumbled to fit the key in the lock.

 Stan observed Rick’s key-jostling from the corner of his eye. The sixty-something is rail-thin and boney, more tendon than muscle, all angles and the odd lump of muscle. Paint cans on scaffolding. Tall in the sense that he perpetually looms awkwardly; Stan recalled how when Rick was driving, the knobs of his knees poked up above the elbows. Mantis-like. _Ol’ blue hair._

 Part of Rick’s struggle with the rusty key appeared to be due to a slight (but conspicuous) tremor in both of his hands. The kind of ambient shakiness associated with the elderly - or the drug dependent.

 “Rick, are you… alright?”

 Rick snarled at the lock, and dismissed Stan with careless wave of his off-hand.

 “Y- _uh-_ yeah, don’t - don’t worry about it - shit, this stupid - come on, piece of shit lock…” and in a sudden and violent movement, he gave the trunk a kick.

 It yielded, springing sharply open. Unleashed from within, a mighty wave of pungent stench unfurled, strong enough to reach up through the nose and slap the olfactory bulb so hard no amnesia could obscure the friendly old smell.

 “Well,” Stan cleared his throat, and said, “that smells like weed.”

 Rick shadowed over the trunk. He chuckled.

 He chuckled, _convulsively._

 Soon he was borderline _cackling,_ a rasp that was more growl than laugh, with shuddering shoulders bent double.

 Stan just simpered, awkwardly. Slowly, Rick’s laughing fit subsided (with the exceptions of snickering aftershocks).

 “Someone - l _-_ locked us - in a, a, motherfucking _time loop_ \- over _pot?!_ ”

 Still jittering with residual laughter, and now betraying some degree of - panic, probably - Rick was now madly rifling through the trunk. He threw baggies over his shoulder like litter.

 “In the middle of the d- _desert,_ with t-temporary _brain drain_ \- which, ha, I might add, is only going to get _worse_ the longer we _stay_ here - ha, this is just - just great!”

 Rick flops onto the ground. He props his back up against the lemon, legs splayed, looking at the sky.

 This was all very distressing for Stan.

 “I… uh… so we’re stuck here?”

 “W-we’re stuck in a loop, I think I made that pretty fucking clear.”

 “So... how do we get out?”

 The sigh Rick heaved was _vicious_.

 “We - I dunno, we, we do something different.”

 “Like… tai chi?”

 "Have you _done_ tai chi before?”

 “I have no idea.”

 “Me neither, and that’s what makes breaking out of a _time loop_ so _fucking impossible._ ”

 Stan let Rick stew for a minute, before delivering a gentle kick to the left knee.

 “Come on, Rick - we’ll just - we’ll just do all sorts of ridiculous shit until we -”

 “No, Stan, that’s - that’s what you don’t get.”

 Calmer now, Rick adjusted to situate his chin on his right knee. Childlike.

 “Thoughts are just remixes of other thoughts. Information in your mind, combined in an _infinite_ set of possibilities. But the mind doesn’t _generate_ jack shit. N-nothing.”

 The wind sent strings of dust dancing pirouettes on the playa. Arid heat roasted their shoulders and noses.

 “… I think we met in Florida,” said Stan.

 Rick’s squint, blink, and then (meeting Stan’s eyes), stare - the intensity of his direct eye contact was unforgettable. It was the experience of being dissected. And then, Rick couldn’t help but smile.

 "Yeah. W-we did. Good memory,” said Rick.

 “Look, Rick… my head, it’s a little fuzzy. But if there’s one thing I know, it’s that there’s no prison without security flaws. There’s no guard who can’t be bribed, and there’s no government or alien cops or whoever the hell locked us up who we can’t beat. Trust me. Give me something to work with here. We can get out.”

 Rising from the dust, muttering something along the lines of _who time locks for MJ anyway_ and brushing himself off, Rick concedes a heavy breath.

 “We met in Florida, at a bar called _The Spill,_ ” he says, quietly.

_______________

 

####   _Maybe smuggling trips with a stranger isn’t such a great idea._

 “The price b-ballparks around 11 schmeckles a gram on Nexicorbus IV,” Rick had started the briefing as a walk-and-talk, but Stanley was jogging to keep up with Rick’s stilted gait.

 “- Which _seems_ steep to stoners on Earth, b-UGHt bear with me here,” _spidery motherfucker,_ Rick. _._

 “- And _Earth_ won’t legally export either! So, a modest pain and suffering tax can be expected as a finder’s fee...” he halted abruptly at the corner, and Stanley - _Steve -_ almost plowed right into him. Then, with a spring, Rick took off again, veering left.

 “Weed costs money in space! _Someone_ is pocketing those schmeckles! Pocketing them _all_ ! And w-why shouldn’t that _someone_ be, uh, _us_?”

 Was this man a meth addict? He having some kind of acid flashback? This man - this skeletal, blue shock-of-hair beanpole, was stuttering on about alien drug deals and get-rich-quick-schemes from outer space - and Stan was being pulled along in tow, as though invisibly leashed.

  _Leashed by what?_

 “Rick, I  gotta say - I’m not sure, whatever you want to hire me to do, I don’t think I’m cut out for -”

 Anyways, that’s when Stan saw the spaceship.

 It was parked (“parked” being the most generous of descriptions) straddling the line between two handicapped spots, hanging over the curve and obstructing the sidewalk. It had to be a spaceship, because it looked like a junker pie-tin UFO school project, only blown-up to adult size.

 It had a wad of parking tickets flapping in the breeze under the windshield wiper.

 "There’s no time for that now, Steve! We gotta - we gotta get a move on, Steve! Here, get in the space ship, the shit is in the trunk, we’ve got four parsecs to cross _before dinnertime Steve!”_

 “ _I can’t_!”

 Rick froze, halfway into the ship, and stared back. Stan stood his ground. He held his fists firmly at his sides.

 “I… I can’t go with you! You’re talking about… you’re talking about goin’ to, _I can’t believe this_ , you’re talking about goin’ to _space_ Rick! I’m just some - some nobody, some loser from -”  
  
“ _Nobody cares,_ Steve!” Rick interjected, hopping off the step rail of the ship, and marching over to come face to face with Stan. Rick stood and planted his feet just inches away, impressively tall, puffing up his chest.

 “Look, _Steve._ It doesn’t matter if you’re a l- _ugh_ -oser, it doesn’t matter if you’re a, a, a cheap male prostitute with an IQ of _eight,_ it doesn’t matter if you’re _scared!_ ”

 Suddenly, Rick took either side of Stan’s head in his hands, and held Stan’s petrified face so close to his that their noses faintly touched.

 “This is _space,_ motherfucker. Any world you want, any kind of place - trust me, this planet is a hellhole, _but you have a chance to get out right now._ Come with me. _Come sell drugs on Nexicorbus IV.”_

 At this distance, all Stan can see are Rick’s brilliant blue eyes. They aren’t the blue of the innocent, pretty-boy eyes, the Captain America types from his dreams. Nor are Rick’s eyes the blue of age - that milky washed-out colour of time passing.

 Rick’s eyes look like the sky. Maddeningly deep, dark blue, as broad as the horizon, giving one the sensation of being planted on the ground and yet falling endlessly all at once. Something in them, maybe a reflection, glitters with unprecedentedly vivid greens and purples.

  _Stan hears the sifting of green summer wheat. He smells the sting of gasoline on the breeze. He sees the stars. Adventure._ They’re on a dismal street in Miami in the dismal 2000s.

 “Alright. Let’s go.”

 _______________

 

_No prairie dogs, no cactuses, nothing._

 Stan chuckled. He slunk down alongside Rick, scrutinizing the unsetting sun.

 They lingered there, together, in silent reverie.

 “ _The Spill_ , huh?” Stan picked up and attempted to skip a rock on the dirt. It landed flat and disappointingly.

 “It used to be a gay bar,” Rick added.

 Stan bristled.

The inch of empty space between them became decidedly _too close_ ;  too awkward to move away again, Stan stayed fixed in sudden apprehension.

 “Well you ah - you don’t say.”

“I u- _uh-_ sed to go in there to piss off my d-dad. Wasn’t really interested in _human_ men at ah, at the time.”

 Stan bowed his head - and noticed, for the first time - _is that a ring tan on your hand?_

 “Were you... ever married?”

 “Change the subject.”

 “Alright, you were a musician in a -”

 “The b-better question is, _Steve,_ were _you_ doing in the gay bar?”

 Stan’s jaw cinched.

 “I needed a job.”

 “Bullshit.”

  _Shit._

 “What’s the a- _actual_ reason you were -”

 “I’m a faggot.”

 Rick left a fifteen second gap of reverence before he, compulsively, added:

 “Called it.”

 “Ya got me.”

 “You sound _kinda_ mad about it.”

 “I’m not anymore.”

 “You’re not a _fag_ , or you’re not mad?”

 “I’m not… mad.”

 Rick shrugged, and, turning away, had his eye caught by the nearest baggie of weed.

 Stan noticed Rick’s noticing, and sighing, permitted, “Sure. Why not.”

 Rick snatched up the baggie, opened it up, and started tearing the nugs apart with his fingernails.

 “My dad always suspected…” Stan added, lazily, mesmerized by the mechanical movements of Rick’s fingers tearing into the green, and continued, “That wasn’t even the reason I got kicked out, but it musta been on his mind...”

 Rick said nothing. He stood, abruptly, and fishing in the trunk again, produced a single pack of hemp papers.

 “D-do you remember packing these? O- _o_ ne of us was smart enough to pack these.”

 Stan shook his head _no_.

 “Huh…” and Rick grinned, “Must have been me then.”

 

_______________

 

_Airports are for chumps, Steve! This is the way to get around._

 Stan gawked at the interstellar scenery on the ride, yeah - it was his first time in space. Stars. Moons. Supernovae. Little clusters of space debris that have to be wiped off the windshield like asteroid hail. But, truthfully, the novelty of infinite expansion and massive nuclear processes which constitute the known universe can be… boring.

 It takes 20 minutes to get sick of the view, which is mostly darkness after all; and as Earth disappears in the distance, and the swelling vertigo and fear documented as early as the Apollo series - there’s really not much to look at after that.

 It’s all philosophy from that point on. Without the chatter of humankind, the universe is mostly a quiet place.  
  
What an anticlimax. _Hey, Pa, look who grew up to be a fucking astronaut after all!_

 At some point, Rick said something like:

 “There’s… s- _uh-_ oOOO much, uh, you know - _space_ , I uh, I guess - in between things, which is I guess why they call it, uh… _space._ ”

 New Jersey was a rusty spec, in retrospect.

 New Jersey was an unlucky penny, sitting on a patch of dirt and pavement that we call Earth.

 Stan fell asleep within the first half-hour of the four-parsec trip. _Space is quiet._

 When they were kids, his brother Ford used to wax on all the constellations and undiscovered worlds in our solar system, beyond the pollution of light and smog. Sometimes, after they had played on the beach and collapsed from exhaustion, Ford would point out where he expected certain stars to be found - changing with the seasons, but always invisible from Jersey. Ford had always seen the shapes in the sky; but for Stanley, they seemed like a fairy tale, a story thrown into a grab-bag full of Bloody Mary and Mothman and mail-order x-ray specs. The stars were a fantasy.

 Stanley knew no life outside of Jersey, nor any air but diesel fumes, and no sky but a starless one.

 Stanley was 17 years old when the tear-salt stung his swollen eyes, squinting at the floodlights of the onramp, and he left Jersey for good. It was a straight shot ahead, farther than he’d ever driven from home. Onto the highway. Any direction.

  _Thank You for Visiting New Jersey!_

 Once, right after getting his learner’s permit, Stanley took the car out on a 45 minute drive to a party in the boonies. That was in Dad’s 1952 Nash Rambler, already on the verge of becoming an antique (if it hadn’t been rusted to garbage). Stanley got his car almost a year later: a 1960 Ford Falcon. Rangoon Red. It was only five years old. The car was a total steal, being the leftover lemon from his high school’s auto shop class. He payed for in sweet-talk and a lifetime’s worth of birthday money and teenage burger-flipping, some $100 cash. That was a lot in the ‘60s, but sure not as much as it could have been.

  _Was it really being “kicked out” if you left of your own free will?_

He merged left, towards the fast lane. Kind of, he mused, although his grand delusions of adventure and escape had never seemed so lonely, or aimless. Ford was the map guy. Stan was already lost.

 He drove until Jersey started to lose its grip on the surroundings. Soot-stained grass was starting to crop up on the fringes of the road. The cars started to thin. He was on the other side of Philadelphia, a city he had never been to.

 At 2 am, three hours into the drive, he got off the highway near Hopeland, Pennsylvania, for gas. The station was deserted. It stood like a lonesome beacon of fluorescent lights in the dark and uncanny wheatfields. The sheaves of green wheat sifted and whispered amongst themselves, as he flipped the latch on the gas nozzle, leaving the car to fuel as he wandered out to the edge of the pavement.

 And for the first time, he saw them: the stars.

 A whole sky full of them, splashes in clusters and shapes of brilliant pinpricks innumerable. They sowed the darkness with light. Along one meridian, they huddled so closely that it appeared to be a white and grey ring around the Earth. _The Milky Way_ , he thought, _that’s the name of our galaxy._

 A mechanical clunk broke the spell as the gas nozzle latch unhinged and sprung back to position. The tank was full. As he approached the pump, and the number came into view, it dawned on him: _almost five dollars a tank._ He had a single fiver in his pocket. He looked at the pump display. He made a decision.

 The car took off in the night with a loud skidding. He never went back to Pennsylvania.

 " _Steve!”_

 Suddenly, Rick was shaking Stan awake with one noodly arm.

 “Steve, wake up, w- _ugh_ -e’re almost there!” Rick continued. Stan opened his eyes, groggily - surrounding them, suspended as though by invisible strings, were hundreds of glistening white boulders, shining in the light of a nearby sun.

 “Check out this asteroid cluster, Steve! That’s - that’s some, that’s some prime, space, uh, scenery right there, don’t see that every day...”

  _Stan never went back to Pennsylvania, ever again._

 

_______________

 

_Tonight’s forecast: sunny, clear skies, with a 0% chance of sunset._

 Rick was sprawled across the hood of the car, rolling the joint, working in silence. Stan didn’t leave the dirt, and instead trained his eyes on the distance, wondering, _who is this guy? How’d we get here? Maybe we didn’t know each other at all..._

 “I feel like fucking Clint Eastwood,” declared Rick suddenly, sticking the finished joint into the corner of his mouth in a snarl, standing up and jamming his fists in either pocket.

 Stan chuckled through his nose, and quipped under his breath, “Didn’tknowyouswungthatwaybuddy”.

 Rick rolled his eyes, and stammered, annoyed, “I didn’t mean I want to _fuck_ Clint Eastwood, yuh d- _dumbass_ \- I mean I f-feel like - you know what I m-mean!” he pulled the unlit joint from his mouth in a huff.

 “Well, _the lady doth protest a lot_.”

 “That’s not even the quote, _Einstein_!”

 “Don’t you mean _Shakespeare_?”

 “I was calling you a _dumbass, Stan_!”

 Stan scoffed, playfully. He dropped the subject, and redirected -

 “ _The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly_.”.

 “...What?”

 “You’re talkin about - the Clint Eastwood movie. _The Good the Bad and the Ugly._ With the cigarillo hanging out of his mouth all the time.”

 Rick squinted at him.

 Stan continued, “I barely got through that movie. You know the part where Eastwood gets all burned up? Tuco makes - whatsisface - _Blondie_ … march through the desert. As revenge. His face gets all burnt up and he almost dies.”

 Back to the sun, face in the shadow, Rick just stood there. Joint between his righthand forefingers.

 Stan rubbed his neck.

 “My dad liked Eastwood. He, ah - he was a real macho, no-pussyfooting kind of guy. He took my brother and me to see it when it came out in Jersey. Only movie we ever saw with him.”

 Stan was suddenly very bashful.

 "When ah… when did you first see it, Rick?”

 The shadows were hiding a very faint blush on Stan’s sun-burnt cheeks.

 “I was … _uh, o-_ older,” Rick left it at that.

 “I always thought - well, Eastwood’s such a good-lookin’ guy - that the second half of the movie was harder to watch,” Stan said, gesturing a _wax-on_ motion around his face, adding, “With his face all messed up. Before the ah - convent or whatever.”

 Rick let the statement hang.

 “Yeah,” he added, finally.

 Stan didn’t know what to make of it. His eyes left Rick’s face and met with the joint.

 “Mind if I…?”

 “Be my, uh, g-guest,” and Rick swung the joint to Stan with a lanky arm. Their fingertips brushed as it changed hands.

 Stan examined the joint, mumbling, “ _wow, this is beautiful_ ,” before stuffing it into his mouth, balancing it on his front teeth. He fumbled for a lighter, finding one in the left pocket of his jeans.

 Left hand curled in an _OK_ around the joint, right hand on the lighter, he looked down the barrel of the loaded paper and flicked the trigger.

  _Flick. Fizzle. Suck. Crackle. Pull. Gasp. Hold. Haaaaaaaaah._

 It was a nice, familiar feeling. Delicious, herbaceous green-out. Stars shooting pop-rock explosions behind the eyes.

  _Everything’s cool right now._

 “I suppose now’s as good a time as any to tell you we’re g-UH-unna die here.”

  _EVERYTHING’S NOT COOL RIGHT NOW._

 “We - w-what?”

 “Pass the j-UH-oint.”

 “Not until you tell me what in the hell you meant by ‘ _we’re gonna die here_ ’!”

 “Not like that, d-dummy, like - look, pass me the j and I’ll explain.”

 Stan passes Rick the joint.

 Rick takes a hit.

 

_______________

 All good drug deals take place in parking garages. It’s basically a rule. An aesthetic and subcultural tradition, based on the practical qualities which only the noble parking garage satisfies.

 The unofficial rules are, in no particular order:

  1. A drug deal should happen somewhere public - but not too public.
  2. A drug deal should happen somewhere you can fit two cars.
  3. A drug deal should happen somewhere two cars can drive off in different directions (making the trade and then driving the same way is _super_ awkward).
  4. A drug deal should happen somewhere made of concrete. Asphalt will do in a pinch.
  5. Dead of night is suspicious. Make the deal when it’s quiet, but not too quiet. Dinnertime.



 So, a parking garage.

Rick & Steve Esq.’s first drug deal goes over without a hitch. It takes place on top of a parkade for an intergalactic carpool - or, spaceshippool, or, something. Stan didn’t ask. In the drugs business, you get used to not asking questions. You don’t ask questions about the massive scar on a goon’s face on Earth, and you _definitely_ don’t ask questions about the dorsal tentacles on a Ygorigan from Nexicorbus IV. _Don’t think about it._

 Ultimately, drug dealing is a 9 to 5 like any other. That is, 9pm to 5am - but free daytimes meant dine and dash breakfasts in exotic spaceports, beach-going on planets with twin suns (the ultimate in even tanning), and the occasional chemistry project on the side.

 By week four or five, Stan had tiny pinprick chemical burns on his hands and arms. Rick had them everywhere.

 Rick was some lucky unsung druglord, alright. _Honestly?_ Who knew an Earth hussie had some hustle in him - and Stan - _Steve_ \- had that ursine quality: inoffensive and soft at a glance, but defensive, and dangerous when provoked.

 Rick knew: a quiet guy is scarier than a talkative guy, because a quiet guy represents the unknown. When Stan - _Steve_ \- is standing behind him and leaning against the ship, waiting to be ordered, serenely looking at his surroundings like a highschooler in English class - totally calm and unconcerned - you just don’t get help like that these days.

They squared off against all sorts of clientele. Gangsters on Mondays. Office secretaries on Tuesdays. Bored blue-collar types on Wednesdays. Young party-goers on Thursdays. And on Fridays, they took a long weekend, every weekend.

  _And Steve Pinington never asked any questions._

 They roamed the galaxy. They roamed the universe.

  _And Steve Pinington never really got any answers._

 For the longest time, things were alright in their quiet, but fun, business partnership.

 Until Rick got shot.

 

_______________

 

 

_I fell into a burnin’ ring of fire, I went down down down..._

 Rick just about killed the joint in one hissing suck. His eyes rolled into his head, he closed them, and then billowed smoke from his mouth and nose. Stan watched and waited for an answer.

 “We’re… we’re basically stuck here,” he mused into the smoke, “This whole place, it’s just - it’s just our unconscious projections. Our bodies, Stan, our bodies - they’re out there still, frozen in time, and we’re in here…” he passed the joint to Stan, who took a modest hit and heaved out the smoke in a sigh.

 Rick made eye contact when he added, “I’ve toyed with an idea like this before. On paper… I uh, I think.”

 He squinted and gave the surroundings another once-over.

 “ _Although,”_ he remarked, “ _I_ would have built-in a fucking _panic button_.”

 Stan had been sipping at the joint all the while.  
  
Rick snatched it back.

 Stan opened his mouth to speak, closed it, reflected, and then trying again, said, “I - I’m a little bit high, Rick.”

Rick lapsed into laughter and coughing in a cloud of smoke.

 “W- _uh_ ell, either we’re lightweights, or whatever we’re moving is _really_ strong.”

 Stan restrained a smile. He notices, as Rick takes his second puff of the round, that the sun has caught his blue hair in a prism-like gradient - bright yellow and pink, cyan, and shadow of purple and indigo through the strands. Starkly set against the red dust, and eddying with the imperceptible breeze. His hair stands stands on end, electrified.

 “I’m rememberin more about you, I think,” Stan took the joint, “I don’t think we know eachother very well,” he puffed.

 Rick shrugs, smirking, “Well, we’re here now, right?”

 Stan hits the joint funny on the second puff, and comes up coughing, laughing at nothing.

 “Hey, don’t, ah - don’t, don’t feel, ah, embarrassed or anything - about, you know. How we met.”

 Furrowing his brow, passing the joint back, “What, grouping up to deal drugs?”

 “ _Traffick_ drugs; dealing involves p- _ug_ eople skills.”

 Stan rolls his eyes, “ _Trafficking_ drugs, then,” he intones.

 Rick looks at the ground, tapping the joint to ash it, “I mean, the prostitution.” He put the joint back in his mouth and mumbled, “That’s what you were there for, right?”

 Stan said nothing. His smile was gone. He stood up suddenly, and started a leisurely pace.

 “So we’re stuck here,” he begins, “But, you said we were dying…” Stan regarded Rick, who was now languishing over the joint, with suspicion, “What made you say that?”

  _Steve Pinnington never asked any questions._

 Rick, sardonically, smiled.

 “Well, if y-you _must_ know, I think I’ve been shot in the leg.”

 

_______________

 

_Specifically, the thigh. On some backwater alien planet in a parking garage._

 Stan had never been shot. _Grazed_ , once, and that hadn’t even been a result of the life of crime - that was the wife of some confused forty-five year old bicurious man, with a break-action .22 caliber rifle. Barely a pellet gun, and the bullet only scratched his right bicep. No scar, nothing, just a little red burn spot that simply wouldn’t heal. The guy had shouted out a frantic apology as Stan bolted, naked as the day he was born, from their place in the suburbs.

 Stan didn’t do sexy house calls from that point on.

  _The bullet hole in Rick’s leg was starting to soak a dark blossom in his pants._

 After that near-miss in white-picket-fence-land, Stan got his ass to a library, and went hunting through the catalogue - _what to do when you get shot, how to treat a bullet wound, life without hospitals._ The librarian gave him strange looks.

  _Why didn’t we pack heat?_

 They were meeting to move a couple kilos, in a parking garage - and it was a Monday.

 They took the silly flying saucer ship, loaded up with ganja.

 They brought some brass knuckles and a taser. Not even a space taser, no - a pedestrian Earth taser. Stan kept it in his pocket. He kept the batteries fresh.

 Oh, and - a pocket knife. Obviously.

 They waited on top of the parking garage, and the northernmost twin sun of Andromeda IV was pooling into a radiant puddle of ecstatic fuchsia and plum.

 Temporarily, Rick felt the urge to plan a vacation. _The shores of Andromeda IV, the St Tropez of the Milky Way._

 Stan was looking at the setting star, and thinking, _you don’t see that on Earth._

 The customer arrived in a sleek, black, and daunting hover car.

 The car rolled down the left back window. Out came a grenade launcher.

  _That’s Federation issue._

 And in a split second, their flying saucer was _exploded._

  _OH SHIT DAWWWWWWG!_

 The smugglers ducked, the rolled, and they _ran_ \- down the concrete stairs, frantic, _why’s the damn lot almost empty!?_

 A rain of steel fire - _Dh DH DH DH! GAT GAT GAT! -_ so loud it stung the ears - _SHIT SHIT SHIT!_ \- they ran in zigzags - and then it _hit._

 Deep in the bone.

 Everything below the groin felt like it was gone.

 Rick looked down: just a little bullet hole. Still smouldering.

  _The femoral vein. Oh God please no._ Concrete blurring, wild, spinning around, _where’s the pain?_ pulse like syrup, _I’m going to die_ , no air, _I’m gonna -_

 He was picked up. Heaved, like a skinny, boney sack of potatoes, on one warm shoulder of muscle - _oh, puppy dog._

 “Hang on, Rick!” Stan was back up to a football sprint, eyes searching frantically for -

  _What on Earth is that?_

 “Well, would you look at that..” Stan flipped Rick into a limp wedding-carry and nodded to the vehicle.

 It looks like a chevy. But the thrusters are an add-on space tech. _That’s weird._

 Stan chewed on his lip, and almost smiled, saying, “I can break into that.”

 He ducks behind the car, leaning Rick on the concrete wall, as the hovercar flanked by goons bolt past them still shouting.

 Carefully, Stan took out his pocket knife, and sets to jimmying the lock.

 

_______________

 

_At least cops can’t smell weed out in the desert._

 Rick sat side-saddle on the back seat of the chevy, legs swung out the door like a 12 year old baseball player, benched for the game. Gingerly, ingloriously, he disrobed from the waist down. The tenderness with which he stripped revealed something about his age. A tiredness, wriggling the cloth down over knock-knees and thin, cuspate ankles. Not sexy. Ruminative.

 And, there it was - swollen and crusted. Size of a thumbnail. A black hole with a carmine red ring of blood.

 “Well, shit, you weren’t kidding…” Stan eyed the wound uncomfortably.

 Rick poked it, and retracted instantly - as though burned.

 “ _Yeesh,_ ” he said, curling his fingers into squirming claws, swallowing the pain, “T-time’s frozen, it’s not really bleeding but, _shit_ that hurts.”

Stan stared at the humble little cavity: small in and of itself, but looks gaping on a leg so narrow. He considered it carefully.

 “Well… where’d you get it?” Stan asked, gritting his teeth.

 Rick leaned back, pantsless on the seat, and blew a raspberry in incredulity.

 “ _Well,_ ” he chided,  “I _wonder_ if this has to do with the _drugs_ we were apparently moving.”

 Rick chuckled again, that laugh which he preserved only for the least appropriate moments.

 “ _Maybe_ it was one of my m-many hot as _fuck_ exes,” Rick grinned, giving his wound a cheeky double-pat. He sniggered to himself, and layed back in the car. _Fuckin blazed._

 “Rick, how can you make jokes right now?” hissed Stan at the peevish display.

 Rick threw his hands up in a lazy shrug.

 “Hey, lotta light weights get paranoid the first time they smoke -”

 “I ain’t no fucking lightweight, you prick! Would it kill you to take me seriously for five fuckin-”

 “Actually, _Stan_ ,” Rick had flipped back upright and leaned out, “I think it _would_ k-kill me, because, _hah,_ now that you mention it, I’ll b- _uh_ et it was your _dumb whining_ that got me shot.”

 Stan sneered. “Is that fucking so?”

 “Bet you were _bitching_ so l-loudly and _annoyingly,_ someone decided to, to, to take us _out_!” It started off like a joke, but Rick believed himself more with each jab.

 “Or, the more likely option,” Stan seethes, “someone was finally putting your ass out of your misery.”

 Rick _laughs_ , again,“I’d say it was, was, y- _you_ , only I k-know that you’re too much of a, a, fuckng _pussy_ to shoot me!”

 “Why I oughta -”

 Rick threw the first punch. _Kapow._

 Right to the jaw, Stan takes the punch like a sucker - boney knuckles and all, _son of a bitch!_ He reels, stumbling back, world spinning, still high - and fumbles to grab hold of Rick.

 “ _That all you got?!_ He pounces, thwacking his shoulder on the frame of the car as the two tumble into the back seat, slapping and biting and scrapping, _vicious_ and dazed.

 Rick locks his teeth on the soft spot between Stan’s thumb and forefinger, and milliseconds from the chomp -

 Stan presses his thumb into the bullet wound.

 

_______________

 

 

_They didn’t see us - but they’ll be back._

 Stan was crouching at the back of a bizarre carjacked space-chevy, ducking the feds, stripping Rick down to his underwear. He worked quickly, tearing strips from the bottom rags of Rick’s pants, wrapping and constricting the wound on his thight, and pressing with the heel of his palm in an even pressure. _Stay calm, just a fleshwound._

 He couldn’t help but notice: Rick’s underwear were… very unsexy. The usual tighty-whitey briefs on chicken bone legs, and an overlong tank top. Rick had jagged hip bones which peaked sharply, leaving his groin in a low-lying hollow of pelvic cradle.

 Faint sprigs of pale, curly hairs meandered down from the navel and disappeared behind the elastic waistband curtain. They were like a breadcrumb trail in an ashen forest of indeterminate depth and safety.

 Rick was covering his face with one sprawling hand. _Ouch._ He bit his lower lip, and was practically chewing on it, craning his neck at an extreme angle. He was hiding his expression.

 He was in pain, and afraid.

 Stan felt… something. Something profound and nebulous, that was caramelizing in his guts. The feeling was sticking to his heart like cholesterol. He felt it in his blood pressure. He felt it in his breath.

 And then, the movement came naturally; Stan lay his head between Rick’s escarpment of jutting ribs and poking hip bones, wrapped his arms under Rick, and around him, and pulled the embrace tight, holding him half-naked and trembling and weak and afraid. _It’s ok. I’m here._

 Street sex work saw incidences of cuddling _very_ rarely. Most of the guys who’d pay for an anonymous blowjob would even go so far as to specify no eye contact. Half of the time, Stan was interacting, conceptually, with a disembodied dick - no voice of encouragement, no soothing hands, just wet sounds and the flavour of starch and skin. Sex work was somehow free of intimacy. _Most guys don’t even care if you spit_.

 For the first time, the other guy made contact.

 He felt it on his head. Gentle ruffling. Lazy, curious fingers lacing in and out of his hair.

 “Hey, Steve…” the voice came soft, and welcoming.

 “It’s... Stan,” he finally admitted, “Steve’s a… pseudonym. My name, it’s… Stanley.”

 Rick chuckled, warmly.

 “Stan. Stan the man,” he laughed.

 “What do you need Rick?”

 “Kiss it better, would you?”

  _Oh…_

 Stan lifted his head from Rick’s stomach. He saw that the rag was totally saturated by blood.

 He kissed the black centre of the bloom. It tasted like iron and cotton.

 “Things aren’t looking good, Stan,” Rick opened his eyes a little, through a slit between his fingers, and looked down, “We shoulda’ taken longer weekends.”

 In Stan’s guts, a black hole imploded.

 “Don’t say that.”

 “Hey, have you and I met before?”

 “Before the bar?”

 “Yeah…” Rick chuckled, “I feel like I’ve known you my whole life.”

 Stan laughed one heavy _hah._

 “Rick," he started, "There... there’s gotta be a way. What do you need me to do?”

 Rick let go of his face. His tear stained eyes met the open air. His expression was serene.

 “Wanna kill some time?”

 

_______________

 

_“Say uncle!”_

 Barely pinning the writhing man to the backseat of the hot car, sun burning at his back and red desert dust in everything, Stan stuck his forefinger into the bullet hole in Rick’s thigh - and Rick _shrieked._

 He flailed, wailing, clawing viciously and screaming, _Stan, you, you you fff-uck, fuCkinG, FUCKING ASSHOLE! P-PIECE of, of, SH-IIIT!_ , but it all came out just as mangled and searing as the pain. The pain was somehow in everything, every cell was dying and shouting and every mitochondria was detonating in excruciating fireworks.  

 Stan held firm, and pressed Rick into the seat with his sheer brick-wall body weight. One hand ironed Rick’s shoulder into the hot tan pleather and the other, palm digging into Rick’s groin, stuck deep into the bullet wound.

 “Rick,” he whispered, holding voice steady, leaning his ear just shy of Rick’s gnashing teeth, “ _Say uncle.”_

 “ _Fuck you_!”

 “I’m not letting go until you quit fighting me, Rick!”

 Rick hocked a loogie right in Stan’s left eye. He blinked - but didn’t flinch.

 “Spit all you want, _Sanchez_! I’m not moving until you say uncle!”

 “ _Fine!_ Uncle! _Uncle!_ ”

 Stan disengaged in a fluid motion. He pulled out his thumb. And Rick fell backwards, collapsing onto the seat like a felled deer, like a trophy pelt.

 The scene hit Stan in the usual delay of a residual pot high - _did I just torture this guy? Did I just make myself an enemy? Shit maybe I should_ -

 He stopped thinking when Rick pulled him into a very angry kiss.

 In his shock, Stan lost control. Rick flipped them around - and pressed the knee of his good leg hard into the boney shoulder of Stan’s pelvis, nailing Stan into the car door.

 And all the while, he was mauling Stan’s lips.

 More teeth than tongue, more suffocation than affection, and yet Rick’s mouth was _gorgeous_.

 Stan couldn’t keep up, couldn’t fight back - so he went for the throat, and bit.

 “Fuck!” _is that the only word he knows?_

 “ _What?!”_ Stan pulled back again, “What is it you _want?_ What is it you have _ever_ wanted from me?”

The were drenched in sweat. The car was a million sweaty degrees and the pleather was sticky.

 “ _I…_ I was, I was wrong Stan.”

 “What the fuck do you _mean_ you were wrong?”

 “ _About the time loop! About everything!”_

 Rick rolled back around off of Stan, scrambles to the window and props himself by the shoulder onto door, hands threading through his hair.

 “I put us here, Stan!”

  _Wanna kill some time?_

 Stan sat up. He sat down in the seat by the open door, on the other side of the car.  
  
“I…” he looked at Rick, “I, I don’t understand.”

 Rick’s eyes were wide and electric blue. Suddenly full of life, and panic, and fear.

 “I got shot,” he sputtered, “And… and - and I wanted a little bit m-more time.”

 Realization dawns on Stan.

 “I remember.”

“I - I’m, I’m sorry Stan.”

 “Don’t be.”

 “I fucked up.”

 “We fucked up.”

 “Stan," says Rick, quietly, "there _is_  a panic button.” 

The two men look at each other from across the back seat of the car. Unbroken eye contact. Honest and empty of ill-will.

Rick swallows hard, and then turning to his door, pulls the handle with a clunk.

 The door opens onto blackness.

 No desert. No dust. No infinitely setting sun.

Nothing.  

“If you go through, you’ll fall back into your body.”

 Stan watches, as Rick looks down into the abyss.

 “You can get to the motel back in the real world and call up a friend of mine. I’m sure Birdperson will -”

“I don’t want to go.”

 Rick stopped. Stan was shadowed from the front, backlit by a halo of sunlight.

 “Y-you d-don’t understand, S-Stan,” Rick stuttered, gesturing to the portal, “Y-you don’t have a choice, this thing isn’t gonna stay open forever, it’s unstable, you’ll be trapped in -”

 “Yeah, I know.”

 Rick stares.

 “Then - then go, while you still have time.”

 Stan looks into the abyssal portal. Surely, he crawls towards it, straddling Rick’s hips as he climbs to look out.

 He steps onto the edge of the car door frame, ready to jump.

 He grabs the handle and slams the door shut.

 

_______________

 

 _Thoughts are just remixes of other thoughts._ Picture a lime-green armadillo. You’ve never seen one, and yet there it is in your head - an infinite set of possibilities.

 Put two heads together, and that’s infinity squared.

 It’s Stan’s turn to roll the joint - he’s a lot more careful with his work than Rick. Uses two papers in an L shape to double the size of the joint - _it’s gonna be a long haul._

 “You wanna drive?” asks Rick, giving his arms a thorough stretch in anticipation.

 “Depends,” says Stan, sprinkling the papers with weed, and carefully pinching it between his fingertips, “Where are we going?”

 “Infinite possibilities, Stan,” and Rick points towards the sun, “But I say, we make use of those car visors and go that-a-w- _uh_ -ay.”

 Stan gives the sunset a long look as he licks the joint glue. “Yeah? Doesn’t that seem a bit… predictable?”

 Rick grins. “What, too Clint Eastwood for you?”

 “Naw, naw,” says Stan, “It fits.”

 “Pass the j, you’re driving.”

“Oh, _that’s_ why you’re letting me drive!”

 “Don’t be such a _goat,_ Stan!”

 They get in the car, roll down the windows and light up the joint, laughing and roughhousing.

  _Rick and Stan. 100 Years._

  
  
  
  
  



End file.
